List of All Articles with Tag 'science'

One of the last remaining pillars of the European Union’s blockbuster green deal is at risk of collapse

A new scientific assessment of government commitments to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions found most lack credibility and would

A crocodile has made herself pregnant in what is believed by scientists to be a world first. The crocodile at the Costa Rica zoo created a foetus that was 99.9 per cent genetically identical to itself, often known as a "virgin birth." This process typically does not occur with crocodiles but with other species such as birds, lizards, snakes, fish and sharks. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Scientists believe this kind of solo reproduction could be traced back to the dinosaurs, as they suggest the species may have also been capable of this rare method. The latest study was published on Wednesday (June 7) in the Royal Society journal, Biology Letters. Back in January 2018, an egg was laid by an 18-year-old female American crocodile in Parque Reptilania, the BBC reported. The fully formed foetus did not hatch however and was stillborn. Researchers from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, say this is the "first documentation" of this kind of reproduction in this species. Dr Warren Booth who has studied virgin births (parthenogenesis) for 11 years theorised that this reproduction method has not been seen in crocodiles because weren't looking out for this happening. ''There was a big increase in reports of parthenogenesis when people started keeping pet snakes. But your average reptile keeper doesn't keep a crocodile," he noted to the BBC. "This new evidence offers tantalizing insights into the possible reproductive capabilities of extinct archosaurian relatives of crocodilians, notably the Pterosauria and Dinosauria," experts said in the study. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

If AI wasn't advancing at a rapid enough rate, there's now a robot dog art critic in existence - and warning, he judges with his tail. AICC (Artificially Intelligent Critical Canine) has the ability to look around a room as well as move, and he can quickly come up with comments about the pieces. The pooch operates on wheels, and once he's gathered his thoughts, he 'poops' out a piece of paper with his full review. Pretty impressive. Click here to sign up for our newsletters

A woman on TikTok claimed she lost her job to artificial intelligence, and has now applied for the role to train AI to do her job in a bizarre turn of events. Copywriter Emily (@emilyhanley69) took to the platform to share that her company laid her off and brought in AI as a cheaper alternative. She then explained how there was a job opening to train the software to copy write. "And I’m going to have to take it," she said. "I’m going to have to take it because I cannot afford my apartment." She continued: "I’m about to eat a can of garbanzo beans. I’m selling off my possessions. I’m in no place to turn down a job. No place." "It’s literally going to take away the prospect [of] me finding a job in the future. But I don’t have a way out. There’s no choice for me," she said. Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter @emilyhanley69 Update: I didn’t get the job! #AI #work #copywriter While Emily later updated her followers that she did not get offered the job, fellow TikTokers took to the comments with their own takes on the situation. One person encouraged her to "Embrace it. Market yourself as a Ai consultant who trains Ai to write. Get the bag mama." Another highlighted how "short sighted" AI could potentially be across companies. "I just can't see how AI replaces writers well. it would give every company the same copy in a market basically," they wrote. A third focused on the positives, writing: "The flip side is, your next set of jobs could literally be being a consultant for marketing firms on using AI in their practice. You’ve got this!" Meanwhile, one fellow TikToker came up with a genius plan to "train AI to do the job wrong" as a form of revenge. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

Scientists have created the world's first "breathing, sweating, shivering" robot in a major breakthrough. The technologically-advanced "thermal mannequin" known as ANDI has 35 controlled surfaces that allow the robot to produce sweat through 'pores'. Designed by US firm Thermetrics, there are just 10 ANDIs in the world. It was designed to gauge a better understanding of the health impacts of extreme temperatures on the body. "ANDI sweats, he generates heat, shivers, walks and breathes," explained Konrad Rykaczewski, principal investigator for the ASU research project. Rykaczewski continued: "There’s a lot of great work out there for extreme heat, but there’s also a lot missing. "We’re trying to develop a very good understanding of how heat impacts the human body so we can quantitatively design things to address it." Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Some ANDIs are already being used by sports clothing companies to test garments. Meanwhile, ASU's version is the first that can be used outdoors. Jenni Vanos, associate professor in the School of Sustainability said: "You can’t put humans in dangerous extreme heat situations and test what would happen. "But there are situations we know of in the Valley where people are dying of heat and we still don't fully understand what happened. ANDI can help us figure that out." Later this year, ANDI will be paired with ASU's biometeorological heat robot to delve deeper into human sweating mechanisms. Ankit Joshi, an ASU research scientist leading the modelling and operating of ANDI, said: "We can move different BMI models, different age characteristics and different medical conditions (into ANDI),” "A diabetes patient has different thermal regulation from a healthy person. So we can account for all this modification with our customized models." Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

It’s the brightest explosion ever seen in the universe, but until now it’s been a mystery that couldn't be explained. Telescopes observed an enormous blast in October which was regarded as the biggest of all time. It was identified as a gamma-ray burst, named GRB 221009A, which came as a result of a massive star collapsing into a black hole. At the time it was a mystery as to why the explosion shone so brightly. Now, further research published in the journal Science Advances has uncovered the reason it was so bright is due to the fact it was facing directly at us and also pulled stellar material along with it. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Hendrik Van Earthen from the University of Bath said: “The slow fade of the afterglow is not characteristic of a narrow jet of gas, and knowing this made us suspect there was an additional reason for the intensity of the explosion, and our mathematical models have borne this out. “Our work clearly shows that the GRB had a unique structure, with observations gradually revealing a narrow jet embedded within a wider gas outflow where an isolated jet would normally be expected.” The research into GRB 221009A has the potential to further the study of huge gamma-ray bursts, which can produce as much energy as the Sun will in its entire lifetime in the space of just a few seconds. “GRB 221009A represents a massive step forward in our understanding of gamma-ray bursts, and demonstrates that the most extreme explosions do not obey the standard physics assumed for garden variety gamma-ray bursts,” Brendan O’Connor, GW graduate student and lead study author, said. “GRB 221009A might be the equivalent Rosetta stone of long GRBs, forcing us to revise our standard theories of how relativistic outflows are formed in collapsing massive stars.” Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

The Philadelphia region faced the worst air quality in the US early Thursday as the impact of Canadian

Astronomers have discovered a ‘treasure trove’ after capturing an image of a barred spiral galaxy located 17 million light-years away. The findings were made after the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) gave a more in depth look at galaxy NGC 5068. The feature is found in the constellation of Virgo, and it’s thought that the discovery could lead scientists to discover more about barred spiral galaxies like our own. The observations are all part of a series of findings from the JWST, with the telescope having collected images of 19 galaxies to add to our understanding of star-birthing galaxies. The bars can be seen in the upper left-hand section of the image posted by NASA below and they’re made up of tightly clustered stars. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter It’s thought that structures like these take as long as two billion years to form, which could mean they’re a lot older than other galaxies. “This image of the central, bright star-forming regions of the galaxy is part of a campaign to create an astronomical treasure trove, a repository of observations of star formation in nearby galaxies,” Webb astronomers said, via sci.news. “These observations are particularly valuable to us for two reasons. The first is because star formation underpins so many fields in astronomy, from the physics of the tenuous plasma that lies between stars to the evolution of entire galaxies.” “By observing the formation of stars in nearby galaxies, we hope to kick-start major scientific advances with some of the first available data from Webb.” It continued: “The second reason is that Webb’s observations build on other studies using telescopes including the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and ground-based observatories.” They went on to say: “With its ability to peer through the gas and dust enshrouding newborn stars, Webb is particularly well-suited to explore the processes governing star formation. “Stars and planetary systems are born amongst swirling clouds of gas and dust that are opaque to visible-light observatories like Hubble or VLT.” Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

A lot of things in the chaos that is life have sparked comparisons to Netflix’s dark anthology series Black Mirror over the years. Its very first episode back in 2011 - “The National Anthem” – resurfaced in 2015 amid ‘Piggate’ and David Cameron, Apple’s Animojis drew parallels with the titular animated bear in “The Waldo Moment”, and just this week people thought Apple’s first AR headset looked particularly dystopian. Now, as both tech experts and political advisers warn of the threat of artificial intelligence (AI), and the AI chatbot ChatGPT continues to generate memes and news stories online, Black Mirror’s creator Charlie Brooker has revealed he’s had a go with the software – albeit with underwhelming results. He told Empire: “I’ve toyed around with ChatGPT a bit. The first thing I did was type ‘generate Black Mirror episode’ and it comes up with something that, at first glance, reads plausibly, but on second glance, is s***. “Because all it’s done is look up all the synopses of Black Mirror episodes, and sort of mush them together. Then if you dig a bit more deeply you go, ‘oh, there’s not actually any real original thought here.’” Shame – that would have been suitably meta. Brooker did, however, note some learnings from his experience with the chatbot, adding: “I was aware that I had written lots of episodes where someone goes, ‘oh, I was inside a computer the whole time!’ So I thought, ‘I’m just going to chuck out any sense of what I think a Black Mirror episode is.’ Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter “There’s no point in having an anthology show if you can’t break your own rules. Just a sort of nice, cold glass of water in the face.” Although an AI-produced episode of Black Mirror is off the cards for now, fans of the show do have five new ones to look forward to when the hotly anticipated season six drops on Netflix on 15 June. Opening episode “Joan Is Awful” features a Netflix parody known as Streamberry in scenes akin to The Truman Show (and stars Scott Pilgrim actor Michael Cera and comedian Rob Delaney), episode two titled “Loch Henry” is reported to have elements of past episode “White Bear” in it, and Breaking Bad’s Aaron Paul is up in space in “Beyond The Sea”. Meanwhile the penultimate episode “Mazey Day” appears to follow the scandal-hit celebrity in its title, and stage stars Anjana Vasan and Paapa Essiedu round off the series with “Demon 76” – a story which is reportedly about a sales assistant forced to do awful things. Yeah, that sounds about right. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

The global temperatures in May were the second-warmest in the past three decades as polar ice continues to

A clip from the launch event of Apple's Vision Pro AR headset heard the audience gasp when the price of the tech was unveiled. When the tech-lovers gasp, you know something is expensive. While the revolutionary piece of kit might sound like a lot of fun, if you want to get your hands on it you'll be forking out $3,499 (£2,813) for the pleasure. However, it does mean you'll be able to use apps, conduct calls, and even type just using your vision. Click here to sign up for our newsletters